I'm just saying it's easy to ignore a buffoon when he/she has no influence. When a guy says baseball players who cheat will be thanked later and the guy has a high position on one of the top baseball teams it annoys me.

In an infinite universe, the one thing sentient life cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion

I don't get how the government keeps getting brought into this discussion. The USADA is not a government agency.

It's because I'm not too smart... I didn't read the articles presented, and I assumed that it would lead to something like what Clemens is going through (and all of baseball went through a few years ago).

If your kid is a promising athlete and loses a kidney because he begins doping in high school without your knowledge because his heroes do it, then you will realize what a big deal this is. Yes, that IS GOING ON IN HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS.

Lance Armstrong is a lier, a thief, and a cheat as was his teammates who got caught and admitted that they all did it. There is a mountain of evidence for this conclusion even if it took this long to build a solid case against him. The real athletic heroes are the guys and gals on this forum that push themselves against long odds and with no Nike endorsement or other financial backing, and achieve great things, WITHOUT cheating their way to personal victory.

If you really think this is not big deal, how would you feel to learn that you came in 2nd in the biggest race of your life because the guy who won skipped a couple of miles but was never caught? Does that put it into perspective for you?

Scott

1. Athletes use PEDs because they work, not because their heroes do it.

2. I'm waiting to hear about the high school kid who decided to use EPO or recycle his blood because he thinks Lance did it. I suspect I'll find more kids who were empowered by Lance's recovery from cancer. (Yes, he really did have cancer.)

Second place: Ivan Basso. 2-year ban for doping (he claims he only planned to use EPO, but never got to).

Third place: Jan Ullrich. Stripped of that finish for doping.

Fourth place: Francisco Mancebo. Didn't start 2006 because of doping.

Fifth place: Alexandre Vinokourov. Banned in 2007 for 2 years after failing a doping test.

Sixth place: Levi Leipheimer. Failed doping test.

Seventh place: Michael Rasmussen. Banned for two years for skipping scheduled doping tests.

and so on

Let's reformulate your question. What if you came in 2d in the biggest race of your life because you couldn't catch the guy who skipped the same couple of miles that you skipped? My response would be to suck it up and move on. You lost.

The point is, you do not win a contest if you don't play by the rules of the contest. Lance did not win TdF if he cheated. Rosie Ruiz did not win the Boston Marathon in 1980. She skipped a few miles. Using needles is the doping equivalent.

The sad thing is now we don't know who won those races. Maybe #2, maybe #142.

I guess for me, it's like this. Lance had a chance to be a leader in his sport and work with authorities to clean it up. It wouldn't have been easy, but I think he could have figured out how to do this without damaging his reputation as a hard worker, a powerful athlete, and a cancer survivor. Imagine if he could have added "anti-doping crusader" to this list of accomplishments.

Instead, he has used his power within the sport to undermine any attempt to make it clean. That seems to me like the wrong decision--both ethically and in terms of his larger legacy as a person and an athlete.

I think that pettiness on behalf of some folks (LeMond) early on in this process contributed to Lance making this bad decision, and who knows whether the USADA could have worked better with him on it. My guess is that there is plenty of blame to go around.

I don't get how the government keeps getting brought into this discussion. The USADA is not a government agency.

No but it does get a lot of its funding from the US government through drug control grants, so the "spending of government money" critique is still valid. The question becomes whether fighting doping in sports is in the best interest of the public and should be a government priority. I think it should. Others have said they think it shouldn't be.

1. Athletes use PEDs because they work, not because their heroes do it.

This argument seems a bit flawed for me. For an up and coming high school athlete the best evidence that PED's "work" is that their heroes do it and get away with it. It reinforces the notion that it's worth it and that it is the only path to success.

I'm just saying it's easy to ignore a buffoon when he/she has no influence. When a guy says baseball players who cheat will be thanked later and the guy has a high position on one of the top baseball teams it annoys me.

Ah. Now I get your point. And it is a good one.

"If you want to be a bad a$s, then do what a bad a$s does. There's your pep talk for today. Go Run." -- Slo_Hand

Lance had a chance to be a leader in his sport and work with authorities to clean it up. It wouldn't have been easy, but I think he could have figured out how to do this without damaging his reputation as a hard worker, a powerful athlete, and a cancer survivor. Imagine if he could have added "anti-doping crusader" to this list of accomplishments.

Paula Radcliffe. An athlete who ran a few truly outlandish and freaky performances -- much freakier than Lance -- yet I believe to this day was completely clean. Why? In addition to passing all tests she had them freeze extra samples so they could go back at a later date and test them again when the testing methodology had been improved. That's a heck of a gamble for someone to take if they are dirty. Since that time they've developed the HGH test, among others.

"If you want to be a bad a$s, then do what a bad a$s does. There's your pep talk for today. Go Run." -- Slo_Hand

I don't get how the government keeps getting brought into this discussion. The USADA is not a government agency.

USADA:

As a non-profit, non-governmental agency, our programs:

Provide deterrence and preservation of sport for athletes, coaches, students, teachers, parents, scientists and more through education and resources;

Include numerous protections for athletes to ensure that only athletes who are guilty of a doping violation are sanctioned;

Strive to systematically identify and sanction those individuals who are engaged in the effort to gain an advantage over athletes who are competing clean; and

Fund pioneering research for the detection of doping substances and techniques, and the pursuit of scientific excellence in doping control.

The pain that hurts the worse is the imagined pain. One of the most difficult arts of racing is learning to ignore the imagined pain and just live with the present pain (which is always bearable.) - Jeff